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certified letter vs. fax or e-mail

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jdnewyork10019

Junior Member
Name of state: NY

One always reads that to have proof of mailing a letter, it should be sent by certified mail with a return receipt request.

I would like to know whether the following proofs of mailing would be rejected out-of-hand in a court of law and if so why (after all, a postal return receipt proves only that an envelope has been received, not its content, if any):

- A print-out of an e-mail sent through a provider like yahoo.com, which shows the date, the e-mail address of recipient and the text of the message.

- A copy of a fax sent through a public fax service, like kinko's, which shows the date, the fax number where sent, the text of the fax and a confirmation of receipt.

Thank you in advance for your reply.
 


racer72

Senior Member
Emails and faxes can be easily altered and many judges won't accept them. They can also be ignored, you have no proof the other party received it. A signed certified letter reciept is bulletproof.
 

jdnewyork10019

Junior Member
Thank you for your reply. I have two follow-up questions:

1. What happens if the recipient of a certified letter either refuses it or, if a notice is left in his mailbox, fails (deliberately or not) to pick it up at the post office within the required 15 days and the certified letter is then returned to the sender? Is such a returned document valid in a court of law and considered having been received?

2. Can a copy of an e-mail or fax, as described in my first question, be sent as certified mail with return receipt request, for good measure, or must the document sent by certified mail be a SIGNED letter to have any legal validity?
 

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